Ukrayins'ka Povstans'ka Armiya: The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, Part 1: The History (1942−1949)

Above photo: (Left) Nestor Makhno the leader of the anarchist Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine. (Right) 1919. Polish soldiers during the Polish-Ukrainian War.

Post-war Ukraine was divided between competing governments in Kyiv and Stanyslaviv who unified as the Directory. Territorial disputes with Poland resulted in the short-lived Polish-Ukrainian War (1918 - 1919). The continuing Russian Civil War saw Ukraine become a chaotic battleground between White and Red Russian armies, competing Ukrainian forces, Allied troops, the anarchist Nestor Makhno's Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army and otamany (guerillas led by local chieftains).

At the Paris Peace Conference (1919 - 1920) the territory of Ukraine was divided between four countries: the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Romania. Both Poland and Romania attempted to destroy Ukrainian society by outlawing the use of the language, newspapers and by closing schools. These "ethnic cleansing" programs were often carried out by the Polish and Romanian police/militia with great brutality including confiscating private property, burning villages, killing civilians and clergy. While the Ukrainians under Czech rule were generally treated better they still remained an impoverished minority.

The Ukrainians and Poles had long been at odds and in the post-WWI period, they accused the Poles of treating them as an inferior people, denying them cultural autonomy, curtailing their chances for professional advancements, persecuting the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and for opposing in any way the complete Polonization of ethnically Ukrainian territory. Many Poles erroneously believed that the Galician Ukrainians represented a disloyal Soviet fifth column in their midst when in actual fact they were violently opposed to communism and wanted to be part of a non-Russian Ukrainian state.

By 1922, the Bolsheviks had pacified "their" region and established the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Soviets originally allowed the use of the Ukrainian language in schools and government and encouraged Ukrainian culture. But in the 1930s, under Stalin's regime, a policy of Russification was begun.

The collectivization of farms was instituted in 1929–30, peasants were forced to transfer land and livestock to state-owned farms, on which they would work as day-laborers. It was unpopular among the peasantry and led to numerous, local revolts which resulted in the Soviets sending in troops to enforce their dictates. The government instituted a program of food confiscation with the stated purpose of feeding the workers of the growing urban industrial centers.

Farmers were not only deprived of their properties but tens of thousands were exiled to Siberia with no means of survival. Those who were left behind and attempted to escape the zones of famine were executed. Farmers began to resist by hiding food and even burning their crops rather than let the Bolsheviks take them.

Combined with an ongoing famine plaguing several parts of the Soviet Union, this led to the Holodomor ("Death by Hunger") and growing resistance, especially in Ukraine. Many sources claim that the Holodomor was a purposeful policy of Stalin's regime to erase Ukrainian nationalism and confiscate the best agricultural lands. Soviet propaganda campaigns were instituted showing the Ukrainians as well fed and prosperous while most Russians were barely surviving on sparse rations. (Note: They were often identified as "kulaks" or rich peasants who took advantage of their less fortunate neighbors.) Between 1932 and 1933 starvation, disease and "punitive" actions resulted in the deaths of between seven and twelve million Ukrainians.

When the Germans invaded the USSR in June 1941, they were initially greeted as liberators by some of the Ukrainian populace. In Galicia especially, there had long been a widespread belief that Germany, as the avowed enemy of Poland and the USSR, was the Ukrainians’ natural ally for the attainment of their independence. The illusion was quickly shattered.

The OUN (Orhanizatsiya Ukrayins'kykh Natsionalistiv) had been founded in 1929 as an organization committed to obtaining Ukrainian independence. For some time the OUN was composed of two factions, both claiming the name. The larger faction OUN-B was headed by Stefan Bandera and the smaller faction OUN-M was headed by Andrii Melnyk. In early summer 1940, the OUN split and Bandera became the overall chief of the greater part of the organization.

The Germans were accompanied on their entry into Lviv on June 30, 1941 by members of the OUN-B and Bandera proclaimed the restoration of Ukrainian statehood and the formation of a provisional state administration. Within days the Germans arrested the organizers, including Bandera, and interned them into concentration camps.

Far from supporting Ukrainian political aspirations, the Nazis attached Galicia administratively to Poland, returned Bukovina to Romania, and gave the Romanians control over the area between the Dniester and Southern Buh rivers as the province of Transnistria with its capital at Odessa. The remainder was organized as the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.

The Nazis slated the Ukrainians for servitude and considered them an “inferior people”. The collective farms, whose dissolution was the hope of the peasantry, were left intact, industry was allowed to deteriorate, and the cities were deprived of foodstuffs as all available resources were directed to support the German war effort. Some 2.2 million people were sent as slave laborers to Germany, cultural activities were repressed, and education, when allowed was limited to the elementary level.

In eastern and central Ukraine, secret Communist Party cells maintained an underground existence, and a Soviet partisan movement developed in the northern forests. Early 1942 saw the formation of nationalist partisan units in Volhynia, and later in Galicia, which coalesced into the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrainska Povstanska Armiia - UPA) who began conducting guerilla warfare against the Germans, Soviet partisans and the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa). (Note: The centuries-long Polish/Ukrainian animosities led the Armia Krajowa to attack both German forces and the UPA.)

The UPA's leaders were: Vasyl Ivakhiv (Spring 1943), Dmytro Klyachkivsky (1943 - 1944), Roman Shukhevych (1944 - 1950), and finally Vasyl Kuk.

The UPA's command structure overlapped with that of the underground OUN, in a sophisticated centralized network. The UPA was responsible for military operations while the OUN was in charge of administrative duties; each had its own chain of command. The six main departments were military, political, security service, mobilization, supply, and the Ukrainian Red Cross. Despite the division between the UPA and the OUN, there was overlap between their posts and the local OUN and UPA leaders were frequently the same person.